George Clinton And The Cosmic Odyssey Of The P-Funk Empire - Hardcover

The first in-depth biography of one of music's most fascinating, colourful and innovative characters. This book is the most comprehensive history yet of the life, music and cultural significance of the last of the great black music pioneers and the era which spawned him. Clinton stands alongside James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone as one of the most influential black artists of all time who, along with his vast P-Funk army took black funk into the US charts and sold out stadiums by the mid 1970s with his mind-blowing shows and legendary Mothership extravaganzas. The book contains first hand interview material with Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey, Junie Morrison, Bobby Gillespie, Afrika Bambaataa, Jalal Nuriddin (Last Poets), Juan Atkins, John Sinclair, Rob Tyner (MC5), Ed Sanders (The Fugs), Chip Monck ("The Voice of Woodstock") plus other P-Funk associates and friends. The book presents an insiders' view of the rise of Parliament and Funkadelic from the doowop era and LSD-crazed early shows through to P-Funk's huge rise, the era of the Mothership and beyond.

A fan since the early 1970s (and attending their gigs since the 1980s), writer Kris Needs has collected every Clinton-related record and written exhaustive histories of Clinton and P-Funk for several well-respected publications (as well as writing sleeve notes for his albums). He has also DJed for Clinton at P-Funk shows over the last 20 years and interviewed him several times.